Tesla is removing the option to pay a one-time fee for its fully autonomous (supervised) driver assistance software, CEO Elon Musk announced Wednesday. In the future, the only way to access the feature will be through a monthly subscription.
The change represents a major break from the way Tesla has sold access to the advanced driver assistance package over the years. It’s also a decision that could have an impact on Tesla’s bottom line, Musk’s ability to unlock the full value of his $1 trillion pay package, and the company’s ever-evolving legal problems. And it comes as many other global automakers are advancing their own advanced driver assistance systems in hopes of competing with Tesla.
Tesla has sold access to its Full Self-Driving (FSD) software package, which still does not make a car fully autonomous and requires human supervision, at various prices over the years. The starting price peaked at $15,000 in 2022, although more recently the company has been charging customers $8,000.
Tesla began offering access to the software for a price of $199 per month. subscription in 2021and lowered that price to only $99 per month in 2024. However, Musk often encouraged customers to pay the initial price, stating that the cost of FSD would increase dramatically as Tesla expanded its capabilities.
But on Wednesday, Musk wrote in a post about
Musk also did not offer an explanation for the change, but there are a few possible reasons. Musk and other Tesla executives have spoken publicly about the adoption rate being lower than they expected. In October 2025, CFO Vaibhav Taneja saying Only 12% of all Tesla customers have paid for FSD. Switching to a subscription-only model with a lower upfront cost could help boost those numbers, especially during what’s expected to be a difficult first quarter for Tesla.
Boosting subscriptions would also bring Musk closer to meeting one of his key “product goals.” required for him to receive full payment or his new $1 billion pay package. The company has tasked it, among other things, with reaching “10 million active FSD subscriptions” (measured daily over a three-month period) by the end of 2035.
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Moving to a subscription-only model could also be a legal protection.
For a decade, Musk and Tesla promoted the idea that customers bought cars that had all the hardware needed to become autonomous vehicles and that all the company had to do was improve the software. But that wasn’t true: Tesla has had to make a number of improvements to the interiors of its vehicles in the years since, and Musk himself has said that a large portion of existing owners (those with vehicles called “Hardware 3”) would likely need new hardware in their cars.
FSD was sold under this same promise. Customers who purchased the software outright would eventually get a software update that would make their cars fully autonomous. Tesla has yet to deliver on that promise.
Currently, Tesla is facing all kinds of legal problems related to these broken promises. In December, a judge ruled that the company involved in deceptive marketing around FSD (and its less capable system, Autopilot) and ordered the California DMV (which brought the case) to suspend Tesla’s manufacturing and dealer licenses in the state for 30 days.
The DMV suspended the order and gave Tesla at least 60 days to comply by changing the names of those products or submit software that fulfills the promise.
Tesla is also facing a series of class action lawsuits over claims it made about the future autonomous capabilities of its vehicles. By eliminating the option to purchase FSD directly, the company could limit any potential liability in those lawsuits should they proceed to trial.
Tesla’s FSD is still considered the the most capable driver assistance software in the US market. But the company’s success has not stopped competitors from trying to develop their own systems. Rivian recently detailed its own efforts to launches FSD-like driver assistance softwarestarting with an important geographical expansion to its hands-free driving function. Ford and General Motors have their own hands-free systems. And the many rival automakers that Tesla competes with in China have been developing their own solutions, with Some even offer driver assistance features as a standard option..
